The Economic Value of Patents, Licenses, and Plant Variety Protection

Gordon Rausser and Arthur A. Small

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: While biotechnology creates new opportunities for agriculture, developments are impeded by confusion in the system for awarding intellectual property rights (IPRs) over agro-biotechnological innovations. An intelligent redesign of the IPR system requires attention to how the definition of rights interacts with the market environment, generating incentives to create value. A distinction is drawn between cost-reducing innovations that increase the efficiency of producing homogeneous outputs and value-adding innovations that create entirely new types of differentiated outputs. A reform is proposed that would require the mandatory sublicensing of genes and certain core enabling technologies for creating genetically altered organisms.

Keywords: agriculture; biotechnology; intellectual property; market structure; Social and Behavioral Sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-06-01
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Working Paper: The Economic Value of Patents, Licenses, and Plant Variety Protection (1996)
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